Debating Democracy: The Iroquois Legacy of Freedom [Paperback]

Bruce Johansen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

There is substantial evidence that, in drawing up the documents and creating the institutions that are the foundation of the American republic, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Rutledge, and other founding fathers were influenced by the long-established democratic traditions of the Iroquois Confederacy. In recent decades, this idea has created a heated controversy that has spilled out from academic circles into school policy and the media. For its opponents, the "influence theory," as it is called, is a perverse attack on American identity - an attempt to deny the foundations of the European intellectual, cultural, and racial "credentials" that Americans have claimed from colonial times onward. This book gives a history of the highlights of the controversy and examines some important issues that it raises. This controversy is not merely "academic". It brings up very serious questions about the ability of the intellectual elite to "manage" - that is, to censor and distort - the pool of information from which public and educational policies, media coverage, and public opinion itself are drawn. Bruce Johansen, one of the historians who has been at the centre of this storm, follows the controversy from its early beginnings, providing highlights of the battle - both attacks and responses. Exposing the machinations of the academic establishment, he makes it clear that academic "gatekeepers" deliberately suppressed works favouring the theory of Iroquois influence. When such works were eventually published, outraged establishment critics misrepresented the theory and labelled it "a new barbarism", "a fantasy", "a neo-Marxist ideology", and "a horror story of political correctness" - without examining any of the historical evidence provided by the founding fathers. Johansen notes that the historical evidence has become known to a wider audience, and in a small way the "influence theory" has begun to filter into textbooks. The controversy, however, has been taken up by right wing media, which have linked non-European "influence" to every dysfunction of contemporary American society from "truly totalitarian impulses" exercised by "thought police," to the rise in teenage pregnancies, to the fall in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores. Barbara Mann's epilogue traces the philosophic roots of European assumptions of racial, cultural, and intellectual superiority, which remain the foundation of education and scholarship in the arts and sciences - despite tokenism and lip service to multicultural values. She discusses the inevitable result: the continuing exclusion of all but a handful of non-Europeans from truly meaningful participation in our society.

Product Details

• Paperback: 221 pages
• Publisher: Clear Light Books (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940666790
• ISBN-13: 978-0940666795
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #356,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is on the web site for the Oklahoma Indian Times, November 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Debating Democracy: The Iroquois Legacy of Freedom (Paperback)

This review appeared in the November issue of the Oklahoma Indian Times newspaper. Reprinted with permission

Debating Democracy -- A book review

By Jim Gray co-publisher Oklahoma Indian Times

Getting the historical evidence to document Native American contributions to the founding of the this country is easy to do, says Indian historian Bruce Johanson and co-author of the new book, Debating Democracy, it's getting educators today to teach it to students is apparently the problem.

The division between Indian Studies educators and constitutional scholars has widened in the past twenty years and over his professional career, Bruce Johanson, has documented the intense debate in education circles between these two histories. Today, the debate has become personal and often vindictive. Johanson is a Professor of Communication and Native American Studies, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His co-authors are Donald A. Grinde, Jr. a Yamasee Indian who is professor of History and Chairman of the Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Vermont, and Barbara Mann, Ph.D., who specializes in American Studies, Native American Studies and African American Studies.

The book documents roughly 30 years of work between the two men in their efforts to make historical fact the contributions that the Iroquois Confederacy made to the founding of the U.S. Constitution. The authors make a simple point: That the Iroquois played a role as important to the founding of the Constitution as did the Greeks, Romans, the Magna Carta or the Swiss Cantons. Mann writes an epilogue "that examines Eurocentric assumptions of racial, cultural, and intellectual superiority that continue to govern education and scholarship, affecting the ability of non-Europeans to participate fully in our society."

As it is known the "Influence Theory" has many opponents and for reasons spelled out in the book, paint a very dubious picture of the guardians of the intellectual wisdom occupying our nation's colleges and universities. Various scholars from around the country stepped up in academic circles and denounced the "influence theory" and through ridicule, trivializing the authors arguments, appealing to unnamed authorities, ignoring the arguments and focusing on the motives of the authors, exaggeration of the authors' point so it could be easily discredited and finally to patronize the growing field of Indian Studies who opponents see as an attempt by the authors to achieve some "late twentieth century respect."

The authors readily admit that they were surprised at the notion that the influence theory "incited so many incredulous reactions, especially vehement denial among many people who know very little of the historical context-and even some, such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who do," said Johanson in the book's introduction.

The book is more than just a story of an argument between professors, Johanson writes, "For those who are attached to the notion that our intellectual history is exclusively European -- and that European culture is superior to that of the rest of the world, the introduction of Native America into this discourse poses some fundamental problems of historical interpretation and even -- or especially -- self-definition concerning who we believe ourselves to be as Americans."

As you read each chapter, the author lays out in detail where the opposition has staked out its argument that the Iroquois Confederacy had nothing to do with the founding of the U.S. Constitution. And over time the reader begins to see the pattern of escalation, with each argument answered, another one raised. Over and over again for twenty plus years the two authors have presented the idea, only to have somebody from the establishment come forward to counter each and every attempt.

During the 200th anniversary of the Constitution, national attention was given to the familiar belts that signified the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, stating that THIS was the nation's first Constitution. And as the nation's cynics began the national outcry against Political Correctness, the influence theory had suddenly found new and more persuasive opponents. But still the authors continue the fight. From National Public Radio segments, to town hall meetings in upstate New York, Johanson, Grinde and Mann have proven to be eloquent as well as determined to settle this matter once and for all.

Indian people from around the country have, to one degree or another, been exposed to the Iroquois Confederacy history; most never learned it in school. Yet for the many who have been trying to make that possible that what our schools teach our children in the classrooms across America be fair to the Indian community. That a non-European people can actually create a government not only with checks and balances but make it work for over 600 years prior to European contact. Especially when you consider that is was done without destroying the environment, or having our elected leaders being bought out by the captains of industry, or denying women's suffrage or creating a permanent working class poor in a peaceful union of five distinct and different peoples. Yes, you can tell the founders of the U.S. Constitution did not copy the Great Law of Peace, but they borrowed from it enough, to win a revolution and establish the concept of state's rights.

Now you can see what is behind all this, from Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanon beating the issue down to mere political correctness, students of Indian history have something to pick up the next time a so-called, "friend of the Indian" tells you your own history.

With a forward by Vine Deloria Jr., Indian Country's most eloquent spokesman, one cannot deny the importance of revealing the intense debate going on in academia.

Read, Debating Democracy, published by Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, NM. It's like a dispatch from the front of the new Indian Wars, the war for the soul of democracy in America.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A secret few people know, August 11, 2008

By 

Lori L. Owens (Henderson, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Debating Democracy: The Iroquois Legacy of Freedom (Paperback)

Most Americans grow up with a vague understanding of our Constitution and even less knowledge about its origins. This book is an eye-opener for the history buff, the general student, and John/Jane Q. Public. Where in our American education do we ever receive the true history of the formation of our Constitution? If it weren't for the expansive-minded genius of our founding fathers, along with the Iroquois Confederacy's League of Six Nations (Haudenosaunee) and Great Law of Peace, our nation would be very different today.